SUNDAY WATCH.

In `Stalker' Story, British Journalist Became The `hunted'

WASHINGTON — It was distinctly odd that just moments before Christopher Hitchens was entered into the official record of the impeachment trial, a Rotary Club meeting broke out.

For sure, this was the floor of the U.S. Senate at Friday afternoon's tail end of the second presidential impeachment trial in the republic's history. The votes had been taken and, now, Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was thanking Chief Justice William Rehnquist for his dutiful, and at times droll, labors.

In turn, Rehnquist was thanking the Senate and then Lott was giving Rehnquist a plaque with a gavel in appreciation of his labors.

For sure, once this mess had ended, Rehnquist was one of the few guys or gals one would have interest in going drinking with. Nevertheless, allthat was missing from this tacky homage was for somebody, maybe Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), to give Rehnquist the home version of the Impeachment Game for a keepsake.

But when this was thankfully nearly over, and just before Rehnquist split for good, Lott entered three affidavits into the formal trial record.

One of them was from Hitchens and surely represented a pained and unexpected turn of events for a refreshingly iconoclastic, extremely talented British journalist known to readers of Vanity Fair and The Nation. A left-leaning and on vocal critic of President Clinton was feeling a tad glum.

Perhaps it's fitting that, of late, he has looked rather drawn and, especially given a new beard, resembled the fatigued and lost Anthony Hopkins in the final half hour of "The Edge." For those who missed that missable effort, it's about some rich guy stranded in the middle of nowhere who gets in big, big trouble with a bear.

It boils down to this:

Hitchens had been a very old and very close personal friend of Chicago native Sidney Blumenthal, the White House communications aide who has testified to being lied to by Clinton on the subject of Monica Lewinsky. Clinton's gross deceits included that crock about being stalked by her and how he felt like a character in "Darkness at Noon," the Arthur Koestler epic on the Stalinist purge trials in the former Soviet Union.

I know Hitchens, too, and he may be wildly unpredictable but he may also be resolutely candid, besides extremely well-read and intellectually adroit. Here's the story he tells, which had a certain slice of self-important Washington all agog last week, and explains Lott attaching Hitchens' affidavit to Rep. Henry Hyde's prosecution team's report in the formal record:

He has known for quite a long time that the White House claims are bogus about not trashing Lewinsky when news broke a year ago of her affair with Clinton.

Indeed, he says that at a luncheon last March, Blumenthal called Lewinsky a stalker. He didn't say that Clinton was claiming she was a stalker, according to Hitchens; Blumenthal was saying it himself.

That may seem inconsequential, but in light of Blumenthal's denials of spreading dirt on Lewinsky both before a grand jury and in his recent trial deposition it raises the possibility of Blumenthal lying to the grand jury and the Congress.

Hitchens had written this tale, though he omitted Blumenthal's name, for a British newspaper last September. It apparently got scant notice.

Finally, with the trial about to end, word circulated to Hyde's investigators. One of them, Carol Bogart, called Hitchens at home on Friday, Feb. 5.

"I confirmed it for her," he said. She then asked whether he would sign an affidavit.

He knew what Bogart's intent was, namely prosecuting the president for obstruction. Time was running out and Hyde's team was close to desperation. Any new evidence to keep hope alive, to use Jesse Jackson parlance, was prized.

"At this point, there were all kinds of things I could have done," said Hitchens, whose journalistic spine is proved in devastating critiques he has written about Mother Teresa and the British royals, among others. (Overshadowed by the current hoopla is his fine piece in Vanity Fair about the cynicism of Clinton foreign policy, including the raid on the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant.)

Perhaps betray a friend or try to do in a president he believes is a slime? "There was only one day in the trial, so I decided to do it," namely give a deposition.

Hitchens said he then had a "long and painful conversation" with his wife, who also attended the luncheon. He convinced her to do likewise. At the same time, Hitchens warned the House prosecutors he would not ever be a witness in any prosecution of Blumenthal.

Of course, that might be a well-intentioned distinction without a difference, given the possible impact of his affidavit alone.

"Not everybody likes Sidney," Hitchens said, in an understatement. "I do. I have defended him publicly and privately. And I am fond of (his wife) Jackie. I feel gangrenous."